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Dessert

Peach Meringue

A baked peach dessert topped with meringue and served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Peach Meringue

Why it works: Peach and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Peach Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peaches

  1. Peel and quarter the peaches, removing the stones.

  2. Place the peaches in a serving dish and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the meringue

  1. Cover the peaches with the beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

  3. Cool the dish and refrigerate or place in a cool area.

Make the custard and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, milk, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Cook gently, stirring, until thickened without curdling.

  3. Cool the custard and serve with the meringue.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit base, with flavor and moisture under the topping.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets with heat to form the meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches, meringue and custard, and helps stabilize the beaten whites.

The step that matters

Cook the custard gently and keep stirring. Egg yolk proteins thicken with heat but curdle if the custard gets too hot or cooks unevenly. Gentle heat with constant stirring lets it thicken into a smooth sauce.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More peach meringue recipes

Pie 12Apple and Pie 5Apple Pie 5Pudding 4Apple or Pie 3 See all 41 →

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